School of Chemistry

In an impressive effort, the team led by Dr. Miras has demonstrated new highly efficient electrocatalysts for production of hydrogen from aqueous solutions. The work was carried out in collaboration with Dr. Ganin at the School of Chemistry and the researchers from the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ), Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Soft Matter Science and Engineering, BioISI – BioSystems and Integrative Sciences Institute, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa. In the article "Tuning and mechanistic insights of metal chalcogenide molecular catalysts for the hydrogen-evolution reaction" published in the Nature Communications the team reports about the family of new electrocatalysts synthesised by facile and scalable reaction protocol using the chemicals containing earth-abundant elements.

This is how Dr. Alexey Ganin, a materials chemist at the School of Chemistry, describes the research idea behind the new catalysts, "The electrocatalysts synthesised in this work come in a molecular form. That means they are soluble in the aqueous solutions of common solvents and do not need to be processed into inks (which is a common and rather ineffective approach for loading of the catalyst on the electrode). Therefore, they can be applied directly on an electrode at optimal concentrations. Ones on the substrate, they retain their ability to assist hydrogen production over appreciable amount of time without any signs of degradation. Thanks to the exceptional efforts from the computational research team we could understand the reason for excellent performance by probing into the mechanisms of the reaction. In a follow up study we aim to demonstrate that immobilization on a solid surface is a step in the right direction for achieving an excellent performance at low cost. The next milestone is to improve the underlying performance of the catalysts by tweaking the molecular structure a bit. For example, we now understand that apart from the nature of the transition metal S-S bridging bond plays key role in boosting the catalytic performance. Although we can compete with the industrial Pt catalysts on price and durability; we still need to work on the performance of our materials.  We are quite optimistic though and the stakes are high. Surpassing Pt in performance while keeping the costs low can help to tackle challenging questions. What to do when wind does not blow or sun does not shine? How to store the excess of renewable energy for later use? Converting the excess of electrical energy into chemical fuel for later use is a great way of addressing this problem. There has been some revolutionary research carried out on advanced electrolysers for solar-to-fuel conversion at the School by Prof. Cronin and Dr. Symes groups already. Therefore, our work is very timely as it will help to consolidate the School efforts and gain momentum towards shaping the future of the green energy technology."

First published: 23 January 2019